Preface

In October 2011, rumor became reality when Google released a new language aimed at developing complex, Google-scale web applications. An internal Google email titled “Future of JavaScript” had appeared on the web a month earlier, indicating that a language, possibly to be known as Dash, was undergoing development within Google, with the aim of being a better language for the web than JavaScript. Born out of frustration with the slow progress in evolving JavaScript, partly caused by the numerous interested parties and committees, this new language aimed to be everything JavaScript could be if it were invented now. Its key goal was to “maintain the dynamic nature of JavaScript, but have a better performance profile and be amenable to tooling for large projects.” It would also be able to cross-compile to JavaScript. This language was released as a technical preview to the wider world and given the name Dart.

I had just come out the back of a major GWT project at my employer, creating a bespoke document-referencing application designed for touch screens that would be deployed in non-computer-friendly environments. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a technology that Google created for cross-compiling Java to JavaScript. GWT lets developers benefit from the structure, type-safety, and tooling provided by Java, while still being able to target browsers natively without requiring plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight. Having spent the last two years writing GWT code and coordinating developers across three countries, I knew the value of being able to use tooling to validate code at integration points—something that was lacking when trying to achieve the same with JavaScript. The ability to reuse code on both the client and the server also appealed to me—I had seen the benefit.

Keen to know more about this new Dart language, I read all the documentation that was available. At the time, this consisted of the source code, some sample projects, and the language specification. It seemed that if I were to make the effort of getting the knowledge into my head, it would be worth sharing with the wider community through blog posts. I started the Dartwatch blog and shared a series of simple descriptions of how to achieve common tasks in Dart, such as how to organize a project, how to create classes, and how to interact with the browser. One thing led to another, and I was approached by Manning about the possibility of writing a book on Dart. Just over a year later, the result is in print.

Over the last year, Dart has had time to mature, and its developers have been listening and responding to feedback. Dart’s Milestone 1 release is imminent, and there have been many changes to the original language specification as a result of real-world use by the language’s early adopters. A community of these early adopters has also been creating tools and libraries such as database drivers, 2D and 3D graphics libraries, and MVC frameworks, many of which can be found on GitHub or on the Dartwatch website.

Dart Milestone 1 is a major achievement and gives Dart developers the chance to build on the core Dart language to create a great set of libraries and APIs to turn Dart into the “batteries included” language that the team at Google envisages. Every day, Dart improves; and thanks to its open source nature, you can watch (and even contribute to) the commits by many developers into the Dart source code repository. I hope that this book helps you build great Dart apps.